Recent attacks on transgender and non-binary individuals often frame the struggle for expansive gender representation and rights as a new, emerging phenomenon and evidence of societal degeneration. But gender fluidity is not new, and framing it as a disorder isn’t either.
Though historians have tracked the existence of gender fluidity dating back at least to 5000 B.C.E., by the 1880s, psychologists had begun documenting transgender experiences through a medical lens — but these studies did not center transgender voices. The trend continued in 1910 when German sexologist Magnus Hirshfeld coined the term “transvestite.” While these studies of trans people didn’t inherently condemn trans identity, in classifying gender variance as a medical condition, they laid the groundwork for trans identity to be considered a mental disorder. And in 1980, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) did just that by including “transexualism” as a disorder in its third edition.
These medical studies had a lasting impact on the terms used to describe transgender and non-binary individuals, despite lacking input from said individuals. The DSM did not move away from the language of “disorder” until 2013. This change occurred largely because of transgender activists who fought for their identities, as well as their psychiatrist allies. One such activist was Leslie Feinberg, who helped shift the language from “transsexual” and “transvestite” to the contemporary term “transgender.”
Feinberg was born September 1, 1949, in Kansas City, Missouri, to a working-class Jewish family and raised in Buffalo, New York. Feinberg identified as “an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist.” Hir work was informed by Marxism, and ze believed that true liberation for all oppressed people required free self-expression outside of narrow social norms.
Feinberg had similarly expansive ideas about pronouns. In a 2006 interview with OutVoices, Feinberg explained:
Feinberg began working at an early age to gain financial independence from hir biological family, which was hostile and unaccepting of Feinberg’s queer identities. Throughout hir life, discrimination prevented Feinberg from getting steady work, so ze earned hir living through low-wage jobs, including working in a PVC pipe factory and a book bindery, washing dishes, and inputting medical data.
In hir twenties, Feinberg was introduced to the Marxist-Leninist World Workers Party while attending a demonstration for Palestinian liberation and self-determination. Feinberg quickly became deeply involved in the organization, participating in and leading many pro-labor, anti-anti-Semitic, anti-racist, and anti-war rallies. In 1974 Feinberg began contributing to the Workers World newspaper. Ze served as editor of the political prisoners page for 15 years and was promoted to managing editor in 1995.
At the time, feminism and Marxism had already begun to intersect, with many feminists identifying the lack of gender analysis in Marx’s theories. Feminists argued that women’s domestic labor and childbearing responsibilities were not only devalued in a capitalist system, but also enabled men to work outside the home and take part in the capitalist chain of production. Later, the ideas of these feminists would come to be seen as biological essentialism, holding the assumption that people with vulvas and people with penises were destined to hold specific gendered roles. However, for Feinberg, these ideas still failed to account for trans and non-binary individuals.
So Feinberg took these feminist critiques one step further in a 1992 pamphlet, “Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come,” making hir the first theorist to advance a Marxist theory of transgender liberation. The pamphlet gave a historical explanation for how the oppression of non-cisgendered people results from a capitalist society that requires clearly defined gender categories in order to produce capital. As a result, any gender expression that did not align with the “norm” was highly stigmatized.
Feinberg’s pamphlet emerged against the backdrop of cultural conversations around de-medicalizing trans identity. The work breathed life into the trans experience by providing historical evidence for the existence of trans identity dating back thousands of years, and challenged the language used to describe transness. Feinberg wrote:
A year later, Feinberg would follow up hir groundbreaking work with the novel, Stone Butch Blues, a semi-autobiographical story that follows Jess Goldberg, a Jewish transgender person growing up in blue-collar Buffalo, New York, in the 1950s, as they navigate their gender identity and sexuality. Stone Butch Blues intimately and brutally depicts the complexities of coming to terms with one’s gender identity in the 1950s and 1960s. The novel begins with Jess’s institutionalization in a psychiatric ward because of their gender non-conformity, though as the reader follows Jess’s relationships in and out of the gay bar scene, Feinberg’s story makes the argument that transness is not a psychosis, but rather a complex and dynamic identity that changes over time.
Stone Butch Blues sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide, was published in multiple languages and won both the Lambda Literary Award and the 1994 American Library Association Gay & Lesbian Book Award. Stone Butch Blues was added to mainstream lists, including The New York Public Library’s “125 Books We Love,” and The Guardian’s top books about transgender people. Alison Bechdel, acclaimed cartoonist and creator of the Bechdel test, which measures the representation of non-male characters in media, even remarked that Stone Butch Blues has probably touched your life even if you haven’t read it yet.” These accolades are clear reflections of the importance of Feinberg’s work in shifting the cultural landscape and our understanding of trans identity. Today, the novel’s exploration of queerness continues to resonate with readers and help them explore their own gender identities.
On November 15, 2014, Leslie Feinberg passed away due to complications from multiple tick-borne infections, including Lyme disease. Feinberg attributed hir complications with the infections in part due to prejudice against hir gender identity.
Up until hir death, Feinberg had been working diligently to prepare for the 20th anniversary edition of Stone Butch Blues, which was released posthumously with the help of hir partner, Minnie Bruce Pratt. This edition can be found on Feinberg’s website, free of cost, which, according to her website, “was part of hir entire life work as a communist to ‘change the world’ in the struggle for justice and liberation from oppression.”
In Feinberg’s life, writing, and even hir death, we see many of the issues that trans people continue to encounter today. In some ways, it feels as though nothing has changed, and yet still so much has evolved since Feinberg’s time. As we continue to fight for LGBTQ+ rights amidst the onslaught of legislation attempting to revoke them, we owe much to Feinberg for helping to pave the way for freedom of gender expression.
Stay up-to-date with the politics team. Sign up for the Teen Vogue Take